Gambling with our coastline

Mar 2, 2013

"Fix our beaches. Full stop."..."Our beaches are estimated to be worth about a third of the city's 4.5 billion tourist industry."..."For our city's leaders, and I use the term loosely, to be content for the beaches to remain scarred and battered as we head into the Easter break is baffling and it's costing the city money."..."In fact, it is the cosy relationship between the city's leaders that is perhaps most concerning.Mr Winter on the one hand represents the city's tourism industry, but GCT get's $13 milllion a year from council - courtesy of the ratepayer - to encourage people to holiday on the coast."

"Gold Coast City Council yesterday resisted major restoration of the badly battered beaches until April."..."Tourism bosses last night backed council decision, saying it was "doing what it can when it can", and the closure of beaches due to the poor weather had a "minimal" effect on tourism.They are at odds with tourist based businesses which say the erosion has already had an adverse effect which will only become worse in the lead up to Easter."

Stephanie Bedo GCB 27-2-2013

A report this week by Shannon Hunt identified it as a "corporate risk" for the council.

"This is an alarming report which Mayor Tom Tate and Gold Coast Tourism will ignore at their peril"GCB editorial 1-3-2013

AND we say you didn't do what you could when you could in August last year ...

Late July 2012 we were one day away from disaster - only averted by a change in the weather as this video published 1-Aug-2012 shows.

The results are lost infrastructure, showers collapsing, Oceanway undermined, towers damaged and beautiful timber platforms destroyed. Those platforms in particular were well used and loved by the public.

Check the slide show for some of the damage. [at top click camera icon]

You will notice the above youtube video (shot Late July 2012) shows the damage to a shower area near Golden Sands at Main Beach. Note that shower is now gone in this batch of storms [see slide show] - also note the Oceanway so vigourously pursued by the previous Council at odds to SOSA's no cement on primary sand dunes stance is also undermined - roped off and unusable in at least one section as at time of writing.

Stop gambling with our coastline - the CST is simply not possible in the shallow Broadwater and could cost as much per year as the Council budget allocated to the entire Gold Coast beach protection [approx $10 mil per year including lifeguards] to maintain one shipping channel for a CST.Atre Are our leaders [we also use the term loosely] too busy prioritising pet projects to notice our biggest drawcard our beaches are at risk?

Short term decisions for long term career ambitions are a hallmark of paid public officers with one eye on their resume for the next job.

They come in and leave their footprint on the way to another goal. Well piss on your own tree - even our dog walkers clean up their own dog's poo.

Erosion - Why our beaches at riskErosion is largely caused by the destruction of natural sandhills which protect the beach by storing sand that acts as a buffer zone.When storm events occur sand is rapidly pulled off the beach and out to sea. Often in calmer weather that sand naturally moves back in and replenishes the beach.Certain grasses e.g. Spinifex work well in this process as they loosely hold the sand in place ready for the next event. It's natures way of flexibly maintaining itself.

Gold Coast has the choice of restoring those natural sand hills (yep we know they won't rip down hard infrastrucutre such as high rises on sand dunes) and invest in constant sand replenishment programs.

This course of action was signalled and recommended in the Delft Hydraulic report 1986 states, the beaches were the GCCC's lifetime "corporate risk".

The erosion on our beaches is largely due to inappropriate development on primary sand dunes. A practice internationally recognised as disastrous to beaches.

Recent attempts to blame the problem of neglect of our beaches on Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey is an attempt to deflect the attention from our Council leaders.

Doing nothing is not an option. So Robyn Wuth is correct - "Fix our beaches. Full stop."